Federation Of Family History Societies

British Library Collection Moves Programme

In January 2009, the British Library will be starting a collection moves programme of low-use items. This is the largest programme of moves that have been undertaken since the opening of St Pancras in 1998.

The transfer of low-use items to a new storage facility in Boston Spa, West Yorkshire, will take place in phases. This first phase will see 10.6% of their total collection transferred to Boston Spa. During the first phase, these low-use collections will become unavailable to Readers. The embargo period will start in January 2009 and last for a minimum of nine months. This period of restricted access will not affect St Pancras’ high-use material such as rare books, manuscripts, maps, sound archive and music scores.

The collection moves are taking place as the British Library needs to vacate current leasehold storage buildings. Firstly, they fail to provide adequate environmental conditions. Secondly, the Library does not have the opportunity to extend the leases. The moves will allow the British Library to rationalise their collection storage, provide future growth space and continue to act as guardians of the national collection.

The planned closure of the newspaper library in Colindale and the transfer of the newspaper collections form a part of Phase Two of the Collection Moves programme, starting at the end of 2009. The material stored at Colindale will be transferred on a staggered basis, and will only be unavailable to Readers whilst in transit. This is expected to be a matter of weeks. Moving the hard copy collections to the state-of-the-art storage conditions in Boston Spa will considerably improve their lifespan. Microfilm will be stored and available at St Pancras

More information on this can be found at: www.bl.uk/news/2008/pressrelease20080717.html

The background to Colindale Newspaper Migration Strategy can be found at:

www.ffhs.org.uk/news/news070604.php

www.ffhs.org.uk/news/news071016.php

Maggie Loughran
Joint Administrator, Federation of Family History Societies